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Ask HN: Please stop "This."

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Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#21

Post by stevelosh »

Are you bothered if someone starts a post with "I completely agree with you."?

If so, I think that's strange. Why would that bother you? They're giving you an idea of what their comment will be like up front to help you understand it more easily.

If not, they why does it bother you when they say essentially the same thing with four fewer words?

It's totally fine to be annoyed by a comment that doesn't add anything or is immature, but that's what you should be annoyed by, not the fact that they happened to use a particular phrase that concisely states a summary of their opinion.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#23

Post by vacri »

veyron wrote: post #8
sp332 wrote: post #6

The problems are that upvotes are invisible and anonymous. The website has no built-in mechanism to tell other people that they should pay attention to a given post.

IIRC the individual posts are sorted by votes so upvoting should be sufficient

I've seen dead comments show up only 1/3 of the way down the list, so there's definitely something else at play.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#26

Post by smackfu »

It's a very silly thing to be bothered by. It's just that once you noticed it, you saw it everywhere, even though it wasn't happening any more or less than before. And now that you've posted this, it will bother you even more when you see it, because "they ignored my post dammmit."

In my experience, when I start getting annoyed by anonymous users on web sites, that's more a reflection on my current state than anything else.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#27

Post by rubikscube »

It's better to use grammatically correct and conventionally accepted statements.

Beginning a response with "I agree" or "Good point" reads pleasantly, without the nails-on-chalkboard effect of the internet-nerd-herd-mind irritating-and-head-scratching-to-regular-people nerd-convention of "This".

Stupid nerds. They seem to like to demonstrate how "non-conforming" they are, but reading sites like this, or worse, reddit, shows how readily they imitate one big nerd group.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#28

Post by nikki9696 »

It's a shorter way to write "I completely agree with you, and I want people to know it, but I have nothing left to add". Language and expression changes, especially in the world of Twitter and social media. People want to be part of a group and express agreement. It's nothing more than a nod, expressed verbally. I'm not annoyed by people who nod in agreement.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#29

Post by wickedchicken »

sp332 wrote: post #17
veyron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the individual posts are sorted by votes so upvoting should be sufficient

They're sorted by a weird combo of recentness, upvotes, and lack of downvotes. There's no way to tell if a 1-hour-old comment has more upvotes than a 30-second-old comment positioned above it on the page. There's no way to tell if a single comment in a subthread has 0 upvotes or 100. This is the biggest problem, IMHO. Factual statements have no visible score for correctness. There's no way to tell if a comment was up…

Why are you relying on a bunch of random people from the internet to vet factual accuracy? I'm cool with them finding me interesting things, but that's about all I'd trust them for.

For example: I use yelp to see when stores are open/closed and if a coffee shop has wifi. I could care less about the reviews, unless one of them happens to position a specific deal I'd be interested in.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#30

Post by angersock »

Provided that it is used as a preamble to signify agreement, and that then this agreement is expanded upon by the author, I do not see any problem with it.

It's kind of like explicitly using the "this->" or "this." formation in C++ or Java or what have you: sure, it may seem needlessly verbose, but it usually doesn't present a major issue when parsing code and can often help make sure you are in the right area when thinking about things.

"This." is useful, provided that it isn't all that's said.

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